James Nelson - The Pirate Round

Home. In his dark madness Dinwiddie was not even certain what that meant. Some mythical place, some land where there was something besides a stone cell and the endless self-flagellation.

Marlowe, Elizabeth Galley, home. It took him two hours to stand up and take a step toward the door. He paused, listened. The guard with the broken arm had not made a sound in over an hour. Nothing happened, nothing moved. Dinwiddie took another step toward the door.

Whoever was in command of the tender Speedwell had smoked what they were about. Marlowe did not know how.

Perhaps one of Press’s men had swum over there. Perhaps they had sent a boat, unseen in the dark, to reconnoiter. Perhaps they were just guessing. It hardly mattered. They were loyal to Press, and they had figured out that his booty was being carried off, and now they were trying to prevent it.

Iron slammed into the Elizabeth Galley’s side, and Marlowe could feel the impact even on the Queen’s Venture’s deck. It screamed through the air, and the stay tackle was shot through. The iron-bound box that hung from the end of the tackle plunged to the deck, fifteen feet, hit with the impact of a cannonball. The box burst open, and a cascade of gold coin spilled along the deck, but no one paid it any attention. There were more important things at the moment.

“You there!” Honeyman pointed to the gang of men holding the now-useless fall of the stay tackle. “Reeve off a new tackle, quickly! You”-he pointed to another gang by the main hatch-“get the girt-line down there. We can use that for the lighter stuff.”

Billy Bird stepped up beside him, and Marlowe said, “This fellow has loyalty and courage, if not so much sense, firing on us.”

“Perhaps not so much loyalty or courage either,” said Billy. “I perceive two boats pulling for us, and it takes no art to guess who is in ’em.”

Billy pointed forward, and Marlowe followed the gesture. Far off, up the harbor, two big boats coming bow on, their oars like flickering shadows moving in the odd mechanical way oars do. They were just visible in the dawn’s light. If they had not been painted white, they would not have been noticed.

“Damn it,” Marlowe said, and he ran around the gangplank and over to the Elizabeth Galley, then down into the Galley’s waist. Flanders was directing the men who were emptying her holds, and there was Bickerstaff, hauling with the men on the Galley’s stay tackle. “Flanders, belay that for now!” Marlowe shouted, and the Speedwell fired again. The Galley shuddered, a section of bulwark ripped apart, the men inboard of it tossed aside. The clang of round shot hitting one of the Galley’s great guns, from the Queen’s Venture a prolonged shriek, and then nothing.

“We’ll have to man the guns, give these bastards something in return. Francis, will you set some men to handing out powder?”

“I will.” This was not piracy, this was defense of their own ship, and Marlowe knew that Bickerstaff would have no qualms about joining in.

Flanders dispatched men to the guns, Bickerstaff took a half dozen below to the powder magazine. Overhead, more booty came swinging across, a great bundle of ivory tusks hanging from the Venture’s girtline, over the deck and down into the Galley’s hold.

On the Venture’s foredeck men swarmed around the stay tackle like ants on a pile of sugar, reeving off a new line, getting it back into action, eager to get every last groat they could out of the hold of the sinking ship.

The Queen’s Venture shifted, rolled another foot away from the Galley, the bar-taut ropes binding the vessels together groaning, the wood creaking, and Marlowe could picture the water rising higher and higher. It would be almost waist deep by now, to the men working in her hold. If the ropes holding the two vessels together were to let go, then the Venture would roll right over and take them down with her.

They had to realize that. And no doubt they did, but greed was stronger even than their sense of self-preservation.

Up and down the Galley’s waist the guns’ lashings were cast off, the guns rolled back, the match lit and ready to touch off powder. Up from below came the men, dispatched by Bickerstaff, bearing cartridges of powder in long leather tubes. Powder, shot, wadding-it was all rammed home and the guns trundled out again.

Marlowe sighted down the barrel of the closest gun. The Speedwell was growing more distinct as the dawn spread across the sky, her upper rails no longer shades of gray and black but dull red, dull green. One hundred feet away, half a cable length, point-blank range, the muzzle of the gun seemed to rest on the side of the tender. No wonder their fire had been so devastating.

“Don’t wait on me!” Marlowe shouted. “Fire fast as you can!”

Crews stepped back, gun captains took one last sight, match came down on powder train, and all along the Galley’s waist the six-pounders fired their devastating blast of iron. The guns were just coming to rest at the end of their breeches when the Speedwell fired. The hull shook, two shrouds parted and hung limp, a spray of splinters exploded from the mainmast. But the tender’s guns sounded smaller now, less impressive, after the Elizabeth Galley’s larger battery. Marlowe could see at least two of the Speedwell’s guns that did not fire, and he hoped the Galley’s broadside had managed to knock them out.

“All slack! Ease away, handsomely, handsomely!” came the shout from behind, and Marlowe turned to see a big chest, bound with iron strapping, easing from the Queen’s Venture’s newly rove stay tackle to the Elizabeth Galley’s. A moment’s pause as the Venture’s tackle was cast off, and then the chest sailed down into the Galley’s dark hold, a controlled plummet, where it was received by unseen hands three decks down.

The Elizabeth Galley’s stay tackle had not yet emerged from the hold by the time the next chest was heaved up from the Queen’s Venture.

Oh, Lord, Marlowe thought, we shall be wealthy, if we are not dead. ***

Peleg Dinwiddie grew bolder with each step. Out of the cell, past the guard who did not move, up the narrow steps. He emerged into the grand entrance and listened for a long time, but the house seemed absolutely deserted.

My house, he mocked himself, given me by Yancy, when he died. He could not stop himself from doling out the emotional beatings, like probing at a sore tooth with one’s tongue.

Across the big space and out the door. It was early dawn, light enough that he could see the harbor below in grays and browns and pinpoints of bright light. Cannon fire. The Elizabeth Galley and Press’s tender, blasting away at each other. Marlowe would not remain long at his anchor, not once the firing started.

That thought drove Dinwiddie forward, and he humped across the grounds, through the gate swinging in the offshore breeze that was building with the rising sun.

He stumbled and ran down the road from the big house to the dock. A mile distant, it seemed like twenty. The cloud of smoke piling up between the ships looked nearly solid, and through the cloud, pinpricks of muzzle flash, and under it all the distant muted thunder of the guns.

God, how he ached to be aboard the ship! To walk the deck with the iron flying all around, to be cleansed by the physical danger and selfless defense of the ship and company! There was redemption, there his sins could be burned away by the battle fire. He ran faster.

Heaving for breath, stumbling, at last he clambered out onto the dock and stopped. He was eye level with the ships, could see them clearly. A cannonball screamed by, not far over his head. The sky to the east was orange and blue, and the only gray overhead was far to the west. The broadsides had not stopped, the constant roar of the guns, the smoke piled on smoke, all but hiding the tender from Dinwiddie’s sight.